Linux Foundation Paving Way for New Kernel Developers

Jack Spine writes "The Linux Foundation has published a how-to document for developers who want to negotiate the hidden shoals of open source. According to both the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Consortium, developers can get frustrated with the processes in open source coding, especially for enterprise-class projects like Linux. 'A guide to the kernel development process' aims to encourage participation from new programmers by explaining what's involved. Some developers and businesses attempting to submit changes to the Linux kernel find themselves tangled up with the processes used, according to the guide, which was written by Jonathan Corbet, executive editor of lwn.net and himself a Linux developer."

Talking about learning curves..

[PAStheLoD]

I don't know what's the bigger achievement. Getting a patch into mainline or reading all of these 67-miles long "super-qucik howtos". Seriously, what's wrong with a wiki, where you can "abstract" hundreds of lines into smaller, more managable articles? Anyhow, it's good to see the most sacred inner-cult of KernelMailingList opening up a little :)

So?

[Gazzonyx]

If someone decides that you're a trouble maker, or whatever, try to get your patch in a different branch of the tree. The kernel has a long tail, and all patches go upstream to Andrew Mortons tree and then hop to Linus' tree, provided that the code is decent and it serves a genuine purpose (A guy from Google has two spelling corrections that were merged and he got credited for).

You'll get yelled at for formatting and such before anyone of higher authority sees your code. You probably won't get your code past a subsystem maintainer without having it look presentable. It's just about getting your foot in the door at any node along the tail. I mean, even Namesys got code in the kernel with Hans shouting at everyone. The protocol for doing things is a bit flexible (I hear Andrew Morton still submits changes to Linus as tar balls from time to time... I'm not sure if he does this any more, though) if you stick to the key concepts.

Just my $0.02, I could be wrong.